


Streetside Serenade

by tisfan



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/F, Music, Parent Melinda May, no powers au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-04 11:44:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18343019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Piper busks -- as well as several other side hustles -- to put food on the table.The Cavalry is one of her best patrons.





	Streetside Serenade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunalso](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunalso/gifts).



Piper saw the woman with the amazing arms three times a week near the Ash Woods rotunda. She would arrive in gym clothing, sleeveless shirt, form-fitting yoga pants, an iPod bound to her bicep by a stretchy elastic band. She did a series of warm ups, and then went for a brisk, punishing run around the reflecting pool.

Sometimes she was accompanied by a young man and a woman barely older than Piper, and the three of them ran together. The man would laugh and chat and keep up a running banter with the other girl, and sometimes the woman would smile, a tight, flat lipped thing that barely indicated amusement. “Hey, Cavalry,” the man would tease her, “don’t you ever smile?”

“I told you not to call me that,” Cavalry said, and she punched him in the arm. But then she’d actually laughed, a brief chuckling sound like water over stones, and they’d gone for their run at a normal, leisurely pace. Gen Xers, trying to keep fit.

But when she was alone, the woman ran like hell. Ran like the devil was chasing her, ran until she was soaked with sweat and dizzy, and then she’d return to the rotunda, drink most of a bottle of water.

And then, she’d come over to listen to Piper play.

The Cavalry would stand there, listening, one, two, sometimes three songs, as Piper played rock music on her grandfather’s Saxony violin. Never said a word.

And each time, she’d leave at least twenty dollars in Piper’s violin case.

Forty to sixty dollars was a good start; Piper did other things, aside from busking, to bring in money. She’d done Uber until too many not-perfect-five-star reviews had gotten her fired -- she didn’t carry water in an ice bucket and somehow not have condensation on it, for instance -- and she had evening work in the bar for a few days a week, plus she tutored a couple of high school students who needed to pass the SATs. Sometimes she babysat for a couple down the hall in their apartments, and she spoke Spanish well enough to fake it as a temporary migrant worker for some of the lawn care companies, if she got really desperate.

Hilarious, having to pretend to be an undocumented worker, in order to put food on the table.

Which was to say, Piper was as millennial as the next busker over. Working six or seven side hustles and no main job.

That particular day, she’d watched a run of old Disney movies with her roommate and the roommate’s bass playing boyfriend (What did you call a bass player who broke up with their girlfriend? Homeless.) and she was playing through some of the theme songs as a variety in her normal arrangements.

She didn’t have a busking license, and rather hoped the cop she’d seen circling the block twice wasn’t about to come over and tell her to move on. She could see the Cavalry doing her run, and she wanted to at least see if she could tempt the woman into a smile with “Be a Man” from _Mulan_.

Other people came, listened, dropped a dollar or two, or five, in Piper’s case. She paid attention to the weather; she’d lost more than a few tips when the wind picked up.

Piper was halfway through playing Hellfire from Notre Dam when the Cavalry arrived, dripping sweat from that long, black hair. She’d taken her shoes off and was walking barefoot on the grass. Her toenails were painted magenta, Piper noticed.

The Cavalry blinked a few times, then she tapped her bare foot against the ground in time to the music. And pulled out a phone from a zippered pocket in her running pants. She raised the phone, then pushed record, as soon as Piper started the next song, playing _Mulan_ for an audience of one. She played for the Cavalry and only for her, no matter who was listening, and looked up to meet the camera’s gaze, putting her whole heart into it.

“Thank you,” the Cavalry said, putting her tip in Piper’s case. Fifty dollars.

Nice.

***

Funny how it was the Cavalry’s _toenails_ that Piper recognized before she recognized the woman.

Standing there in a white and cherry print dress with fancy high heels and her toes on display, she held hands with a little girl, maybe eight or nine. Piper wasn’t so good at judging ages of children, really. Piper finished her song -- Nothing else Matters by Metallica -- and saluted the Cavalry with her bow.

“This is her,” the Cavalry said, jerking her chin at Piper.

“Hi,” Piper said. “Is this your daughter?” So much for Piper’s pipe dream, that the woman in the tight track pants with the killer biceps would want to go for a cup of coffee at some point.

“This is Robin, yes,” she said. “And I’m Melinda, sorry I don’t think I’ve ever introduced myself.”

“I’m Piper. Nice to meet you, by name, I mean,” Piper said. “I’ve been calling you the Cavalry in my head for weeks now.”

Melinda shook her head. “I told Tripp not to call me that.”

“Yeah, they seem nice, your friends,” Piper said, not really knowing how to respond. “Do you have a favorite song?”

Robin tucked closer to her mother’s leg -- probably her mother, maybe -- and peered at Piper with huge eyes.

“I showed her the video I made,” Melinda said. “And we probably watched it eight dozen times in the last two weeks.”

“You want me to play that,” Piper said, “or are you tired of that, and you want something else? You like Moana? I bet you do, everyone likes Moana.”

Robin didn’t say anything, and she wasn’t really looking at Piper either, instead, looking at the violin. She squeezed her mom’s hand -- well, probably her mom -- and bounced her leg a few times. Like she was counting the beat for a song that Piper wasn’t playing.

“You want me to show her the picture?” Melinda asked. “Remember the picture, Robin, that you drew? Can I show it to her?”

Robin squeezed her mother’s hand again, her leg bouncing to some-- Piper’s world narrowed to beats and rhythms, the way Robin’s fingers were twitching, counting the syllables of the words, her knee jiggling.

Melinda had already taken out a piece of paper from her handbag, folded in eighths, but Piper didn’t need to see it.

“You want me to play ‘Let it Go’?”

Melinda’s mouth dropped open. “How did you--” she was unfolding the paper and showed a girl in a blue dress dancing in the darkness, not quite a stick figure, but that second stage of people-drawing, with shoulders and triangles for dresses, and black sky with eight-pointed snowflakes.

“She knows the beat, don’t you?”

Piper didn’t wait for Robin to say anything -- Piper was getting the feeling that Robin didn’t talk much, if at all. But she knew music. And she knew what she wanted to hear.

So, Piper played it.

_The cold never bothered me anyway..._

Melinda handed her a fifty -- and the picture.

Piper took it home and promptly stuck it to her fridge with her _King of Nebraska_ fridge magnet and took a picture of it.

“Did you adopt a kid?” her roommate asked her at breakfast the next morning.

“It’s one of my patron’s kids,” Piper said, stirring more than the usual amount of sugar in her coffee cup.

“That’s cute.”

***

Three days later, Piper was playing, and Melinda came by, out of breath and glowing with exercise.

“You were,” Melinda said, “really _amazingly_ good with Robin. Do you have kids?”

“Me, no? Single Latina lesbian, looking for life partner. Must enjoy music, cats, and coffee,” Piper said, and then felt her cheeks heat. She didn’t usually lead with that. In fact, she didn’t think she’d ever actually _led_ with that. “But, uh, I did put her picture up on my fridge, that’s what you’re supposed to do, right?”

Melinda gave out another one of those ghost chuckles, like she was saving them up for a rainy day. “You don’t have to lie,” she said.

“Pics or it didn’t happen,” Piper crowed, and despite her rapidly fleeing audience, she pulled out her phone. In between two pictures of her cat, one of the blackboard for one of her tutoring sessions, and a selfie with her and her roommate when they went out clubbing, was the olive green fridge door and Robin’s picture stuck to it with a magnet.

“Huh,” Melinda said. “So, did you mean that, too?”

“What?”

“Must enjoy music, cats, and coffee?”

“Uh, with-- er--” Piper took a deep breath and did not allow herself to panic in lesbian. “It’s negotiable, for the right person?”

“And?”

“You-- would be the right person, if, I mean, you were asking me on a date, I would love to go on a date with you, and if you were sort of feeling me out for a friend of yours or something--”

“No, I mean me.”

“Then, I would love to,” Piper said. “Go on a date. With you. The cherry dress was nice, I liked it. I’ve… uh, got lunch open tomorrow?”

“Lunch then,” Melinda said. “Do you know Muze? It’s not far from here.”

“Sure, smells great,” Piper said. She’d walked by there a few times, but the prices were often out of her reach. “More of a Shake-Shack girl, if we’re going--”

“I asked you, I will pay,” Melinda said, almost primly.

“You don’t have to do that--”

Melinda pulled out her own phone and showed Piper a short video of Robin, singing the words under her breath, while Piper played in the background. “Yeah, I do. I liked you before I brought her to see you-- your little side hustle here for the tourists. But she likes you, and that makes you even better.”

“You-- uh, might want to lower your expectations, a bit.”

Melinda snorted, undelicate, unladylike, and absolutely authentic. “You should have met Robin’s dad. You have no idea how low the bar is.”

Piper shrugged. “Okay, then, lunch.”


End file.
